The stories behind the buildings, statues and other points of interest that make Manhattan fascinating.

Wednesday, October 29, 2014

The Jacob Dreicer House -- No. 4 East 78th Street

A decade after speculative builders had lined the blocks
branching off Central Park with identical and monotonous brownstone rowhouses, the
78th Street block between Fifth and Madison Avenues was still mostly
undeveloped. In 1871 Silas M. Styles had
erected three such homes; but nothing further would happen on the block until
the 1880s.

When architect and builder Edward Kilpatrick purchased the 23-foot wide
plot at No. 4 East 78th Street, he intended that this home would
stand out. The Queen Anne style was on
the cutting edge of residential design and No. 4 would embrace it with passion. Kilpatrick began construction of the home in
1887 and when completed in 1889, it had all the architectural bells and
whistles expected in the fanciful style.

A dramatic, sweeping stone stoop rose to the asymmetrical
entrance floor. Three levels of
rough-cut brownstone, including the basement, were surmounted by a story of red
brick with brownstone trim. A steep
mansard with a copper-clad dormer capped it all. As attention-grabbing as the off-set porch
was; it was trumped by the broad arch of the second floor. A mid-century photograph shows the arch
filled with glass panes—if these were original, this area may have been
intended as a conservatory of sorts.

The sweeping stoop emphasized the offset porch. Note that the stone fence to the right terminates in a wonderful carved lion's head. photo by Berenice Abbott from the collection of the New York Public Library

As construction neared completion, on January 5, 1889,
the Real Estate Record & Builders’ Guide reported that Kilpatrick had sold
the house to “Fannie wife of Arnold Falk.”
The Falks took out a mortgage of $24,000 on their new home, about
$590,000 today.

Falk, with his brother Gustav, was a partner in G. Falk
& Bro. Born in Germany, Falk had
started out in business in America as a cigar-manufacturer. In 1859 he and his brother partnered to import leaf tobacco from Holland and Hamburg, and export American
tobacco to Europe. America’s Successful Men of Affairs said of him in 1895, “Success
came to this house through their enterprise, industry and good character.”

The Falks would not enjoy their upscale new home for
long. Arnold died in Heidelberg,
Germany on June 18, 1891. The house
passed rather quickly through new owners.
In 1895 it was purchased by Mary A. McLaughlin, whose husband was a
police captain. He was placed
under harsh scrutiny by the New York State Senate’s Lexow Committee that same year. The committee was formed specifically to weed
out corruption and graft within the New York City Police Department.

Delicate carving rims the maw-like arch.

Frederick A. Burnham, President of the Mutual Reserve Fund
Life Association, purchased the home from the disgraced couple. He was as well known for his chess-playing
abilities as for his business acumen.
Burnham regularly appeared in newspapers reporting the results of
chess tournaments. In April 1897 he sold
the house for about $75,000. At the time
the family of Jacob Dreicer was living at No. 118 East 64th
Street. But before long they would move
into the fashionable home off Central Park.

Dreicer had come to New York from Russia in 1866. Two years later he established his jewelry
business at No. 1128 Broadway. At a time
when American socialites were interested mainly in pearls, Dreicer brought with
him an appreciation for brightly-colored gems like emeralds, rubies, and sapphires. Decades later The New York Times would
remember that “colored stones were valued by many persons as little more than
colored glass.”

The Dreicer name became synonymous with exquisite jewelry. In 1885 Jacob took his son, Michael, into the
firm as a partner, changing the firm’s name to J. Dreicer & Son.
Unpleasant publicity came to the family towards the end of 1897 when
daughter Mary (known as Mamie) filed for divorce from her husband, Max
Lasar. To make matters even messier, Max,
a diamond dealer, was arrested for smuggling, and $100,000 worth of unset
diamonds seized on December 3.

In reporting the arrest, The Sun mentioned “Mrs. Lasar, was
a Miss Dreicer, a daughter of Jacob Dreicer…who, with his son Michael, keeps a
swell jewelry store at 292 Fifth avenue.
The marital troubles of Mr. and Mrs. Max Lasar have attracted
considerable notice.”

By 1911 Jacob and his wife Gitel were living in the East 78th
Street house. The area had been plagued
by burglaries that year. On February 22 The Times said “Residents of
the block have been agitated because three weeks ago thieves entered the home
of Jacob H. Schiff and stole clothing of two servants from their rooms…Also
about the same time, it was learned last night, thieves attempted to pry off
one of the iron bars guarding the Clark art gallery.”

Then on February 21, Mary Ryan, a servant in the Colfax
house at No. 9 East 78th Street, was startled by two men on the roof
of a three-story extension behind the mansion.
She threw open the window and demanded to know what they wanted.

“We’re private watchmen,” one snapped. “Shut the window and forget it. We are looking for burglars.”

So Mary did. But
later, when she happened upon Thomas Smith, a watchman for the gargantuan
mansion of William A. Clark, she mentioned the encounter to him. Suspicious, Smith
rushed back to the Clark house and up to the fourth floor where the art gallery
bar had been tampered with earlier. He
saw the beams of flashlights on the gallery roof and telephoned police.

While police rushed to the mansion, the thieves were
apparently scared off by Smith. In the
meantime the Dreicers were entertaining in their home. The
Dreicer’s butler, Henry Whitehead, who lived on the top floor, was busy with
the reception. The burglars jimmied open
a fourth floor window and made off with some of Whitehead’s clothing and a box
of cigars. Police surmised they heard
the voices of the people below and were frightened away before they could take
anything of value.

Following her divorce, Mamie and her son, Walter Lasar, had
come to live with her parents. In 1916 the somewhat pudgy young man graduated
from Yale, where his classmates had referred to him as “Dubie.” Later that year a college publication said “Lasar
is undecided about his future occupation.”

That year the Dreicers did renovations to the
house. On September 30 the Record &
Guide reported that they had commissioned architect Henry O. Chapman to add an
apartment and one-story addition to the house at a cost of $2,500.

The Dreicers, like all wealthy families, were acutely aware
that their mansion was a tempting target for burglars during the summer months
when the family was away. It was
possibly the 1911 burglary that prompted them to install a burglar alarm. But on Monday, May 27, 1918 when the Dreicers
closed the house and headed for their summer estate at Lawrence, Long Island,
they forgot one thing. The Sun, on May
31, said “The burglar alarm protecting the big stone residence of Jacob Dreicer
of the Fifth avenue jewelry firm of Dreicer & Co. at 4 East Seventy-eight
street was left unconnected for the
first time in many years.”

As luck would have it, Walter Lasar went back to the house
around dusk on May 30. When he reached
the front door, he saw that the glass doorknob had been broken. Rather than enter, he rushed to Fifth Avenue
and hailed a policeman.

Officer Joseph Healy went inside, stationing Walter on the
stoop. Floor by floor the policeman
checked the house; finally hearing the sound of labored breathing and footsteps
“of persons who obviously were struggling under a heavy burden,” reported The
Sun.

Healy pulled his nightstick and handgun and crouched on the
staircase. When the burglars appeared,
he pounced, ready for a fight. But “the
two were so frightened at the figure that jumped from the dark that Healy had
little trouble in catching both before they knew what was happening.”

The two “husky boys” were school-aged. William Kelly was 13 years old and his
accomplice, Thomas Cody was just 12. The
boys had crammed everything they could carry into suit cases. At the 67th Street station police
said “the contents of the suit cases were worth several thousand dollars. Especially valuable appeared the glittering
contents of several small boxes filled with stones of various sizes, shapes and
coloring, many of them diamonds.”

The young criminals were turned over to the Society for the
Prevention of Cruelty to Children.

Walter Lasar soon became less undecided about his future and in
1920 had risen to the rank of 2nd Lieutenant in the Quartermaster
Section of the U.S. Army Reserves. That
year Gitel Dreicer was looking for a new girl to serve in her dining room. An advertisement in both The Sun and the New
York Herald on May 15 read “Wanted: A competent waitress with best of
reference.”

The following year would be devastating for the Dreicer
family. On July 26, 1921, Michael
Dreicer was at his summer estate, Deepdale, formerly owned by William K.
Vanderbilt, Jr. The 54-year old jeweler died
unexpectedly that day. His father was
deeply affected. Less than a month later,
on August 14, the 82-year old Jacob Dreicer died suddenly in his Lawrence, Long
Island summer house. The Evening World
attributed his death to a broken heart.

“There was a strong tie of respect and affection between
them and it is said the son’s death was a mortal blow to the father.”

Living in the East 78th Street house with Gitel Dreicer
were two of her three daughters and two grandsons. Mamie had retaken her maiden name of Mary
Dreicer and interestingly enough, Walter also renounced name Lasar name,
becoming Walter Dreicer. Frances was
widowed. The population of the mansion
was reduced by one in April 1922 when Frances’s son, Louis S. Davidson, married
Alice Virginia Ansbacher in the Ritz-Carlton.

The women lived together on East 78th until
December 6, 1933 when Gitel Dreicer, 89-years old, died. The estate was divided equally among Mary,
Frances, and their married sister Regina who lived at No. 270 Park Avenue.

Walter Dreicer never married, living on in the in the house
until his death at the age of 44 in October 1938. His funeral was held in the mansion on Thursday
morning October 6.

The brownstone carvings included seashells between the cornice brackets.

A decade later the house was divided into large apartments,
one each on the parlor and second floor; and two on each floor above. A doctor’s office was established in the
basement. It was most likely at this
time that the wonderful brownstone stoop was removed and a more commercial
entrance installed at sidewalk level.

Perhaps the most noteworthy resident in the renovated house would
be the young Woody Allen. Eric Lax, in
his Woody Allen: A Biography,
mentions “As part of his continuing education, every afternoon at four o’clock
Woody walked the four blocks from his apartment at 4 East Seventy-eighth Street
to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and spent half an hour studying a different
exhibit. His choice for viewing was
sequential rather than random and so eventually, by doing his thirty minutes
each day, he studied the whole museum.”

Despite the tragic loss of the dramatic stoop; Kilpatrick’s
robust design still makes a bold statement on the block among the more expected
limestone-fronted mansions of the period.